One wee fragment of it can flourish into a swath of green growing strands that entangles float planes and boat engines. Across the state, it has been found in 18 freshwater lakes and rivers. Many people decorate their fish aquariums with it.

It’s called Elodea.

Last week, the aquatic plant was a topic of discussion at the Alaska Invasive Species Workshop in Juneau. Researchers have traced the beginning of the invasive plant’s transmission around Alaska to people dumping out their aquariums into nearby lakes. An aggressive hitchhiker, Elodea will cling to float planes and spread further.

Tom Heutte, an aerial survey coordinator with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, described one encounter in Cordova.

“We were flying along and one of our aerial surveyors looked out the window and sees a bunch of weeds stuck to the rudder of the float plane,” he said.

Elodea out competes native plants by blocking sunlight and degrades salmon habitat. The plant has been found from Fairbanks to Cordova, but not in Southeast. Heutte hopes that the region has avoided invasion.

He surveyed the float plane pond at Juneau’s airport for Elodea and found none. Heutte said that saltwater is a likely Elodea killer, one reason Southeast may have avoided the plant invasion. He also believes that lack of a road system, and difficulty of access to remote lakes, may have kept Elodea from spreading here. Over the next two years Heutte plans to survey lakes throughout the region in order to find out for certain.

It all begins with one plant fragment, he said.

Experts discovered a weapon against Elodea called fluridone. The herbicide disrupts Elodea’s capability to photosynthesize. It prohibits the plant’s ability to produce its own food, killing by starvation, yet harms few native plants. In some parts of Alaska scientists have completely eradicated Elodea with fluridone, said John Morton, supervisory fish and wildlife biologist at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

Elodea is just one front in a battle against invasives.

“We are only at the beginning of the invasion curve for novel species,” Morton said.

You can learn more about invasive species on the Alaska Department of Fish & Game’s website.

KENAI — The Kenai Peninsula is leading efforts in eradicating elodea, an invasive aquatic plant species found in various parts of the state.

The leafy, long-stemmed plant was found in Beck Lake, Daniels Lake and Stormy Lake, all in Nikiski. Efforts to prevent further spread have been successful, said Kenai National Wildlife Refuge supervisory biologist Dr. John Morton. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has not found the plant anywhere else on the Peninsula.

"To the best of our knowledge, it only occurred in the three lakes north of Nikiski," Morton said in a presentation Tuesday to the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly. "Our main concern is that it doesn't occur in any of the three lakes. We're continuing to work with other areas in the state in hopes that they will catch up."

The Nikiski lakes are clear for the most part, but the department is still conducting spot treatments, the Peninsula Clarion reported.

Officials treating other lakes in Alaska are further behind in their efforts to tackle the invasive plant problem.

Lakes in Anchorage are still being treated for elodea, and the plant was recently discovered in Lake Hood, the site of one of the world's busiest floatplane bases. Several of Cordova's lakes still have elodea, and infestations near Fairbanks are undergoing treatment.

The Fish and Wildlife Service can treat the lakes once the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation issues a permit, which can take up to 100 days.

The lengthy process is partly due to the department being cautious about spreading chemicals to the environment, but it can delay treatment, Morton said.

"If you apply in the spring, you're lucky if you can start treatment by the fall," he said.

The funds for fighting elodea have been provided without help from the state, said Heather Stewart, a natural resource specialist for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. The treatment projects have been supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the Kenai Peninsula Borough and other smaller sources, she said.